Bothwell and Huntly, they say, fairly led him out of the presence. Good lack, here was Proof the Second! The companion of his prince! He would certainly have killed the Italian had not the Queen taken care that he should not.
Once more he went away, and stayed away. He would wait until she felt the need of him, he said to his friends Archie Douglas and Ruthven, who never left him now. On this occasion the Master of Lindsay was of the party, which rode into the Carse of Gowrie, hunting the fox. Hacked son of a fighting father, worse companion he could not have had—saving the presence of the other two—than Lindsay of the burnt face and bloodshot eye. ‘The King with many friends!’ said Bothwell when he heard how they set out. ‘Smarthering Archie to stroke him tender, Ruthven to scrape him raw, and now Lindsay with his fire-hot breath to inflame the part! Geordie, we must fend for the Queen.’ Huntly, sublimely in love, conscious of his growth in grace, said that he was ready.
With the aid of these two advancing noblemen her Majesty’s government went on. She gave the Hamiltons hard terms, which they took abjectly enough; she pardoned Argyll, because he must be separated from his former friends; the rest of the rebels were summoned to surrender to her mercy at the Market Cross; failing that, forfeiture of lands and goods for my Lord of Moray. The day fixed for him was the 12th March. Huntly was sure he would not come, but Bothwell shook his head. ‘Keep your eye on Mr. Secretary’s letter-bag, madam, and let him know that you do it. I shall feel more restful o’ nights when we are over the 12th March. Another thing you may do: throw him into the company of your brown-eyed Fleming. Does your Majesty know that property of a dish of clear water—to take up the smell of the room you set it in? Your Lethington has that property, therefore let him absorb your little Fleming; you will have him as dovelike as herself.’ The advice was taken, and Mr. Secretary rendered harmless for the present.
Then came news of the King’s return; but not the King. He was certainly at Inchkeith, said gossip—Inchkeith, an island in the Firth; but when she asked what he did there, she got confused replies. Bothwell said that he was learning to govern. ‘He has been told, madam, do you see? that if he can rule Lindsay and Ruthven in three roods of land he will have no trouble with Scotland afterwards.’
The Queen, although she suffered this light-hearted kind of criticism without rebuke, did not reply to it, nor did she let Bothwell see that she was anxious. The Italian saw it, however, whether she would or no, and took care to give her every scrap of news. She learned from him that the King was drinking there, fuddling himself. He was holding a Court, where (as Bothwell had guessed) he was easily King, throned on a table, with a ‘lovely Joy’ on either hand. She had the names of his intimates, with exact particulars of their comings and goings. The Earl of Morton was not above suspicion; he went there by night always, cloaked and in a mask. The Queen, more conscious of her power since the rebellion, conscious now of her matronly estate, grew sick to have such nasty news about her—it was as if the air was stuck with flies. Presently she fell sick in good truth, with faintings, pains in her side, back-soreness, breast-soreness, heart-soreness. It did not help her to remember that she must be at Linlithgow at Christmas, and meet the King there.
Lying in her bed, smothered in furs, shivering, tossing herself about—for she never could bear the least physical discomfort—she chewed a bitter cud in these dark days, and her thoughts took a morbid habit. She fretted over the Court at Inchkeith, imagined treasons festering there and spreading out like fungus to meet the rebels in England; distrusted Bothwell because he did not choose to come to her, Huntly because he did not dare; she distrusted, in fact, every Scot in Scotland, and found herself thereby clinging solely to the Italian; and of him—since she must speak to somebody—she consequently saw too much. The man was very dextrous, very cheerful, very willing; but he had a gross mind, and she had spoiled him. To be kind to a servant, nine times in ten, means that you make him rich at your own charges, and then he holds cheap what his own welfare has diminished. So it was here: Davy was not the tenth case. She had been bountiful in friendship, confidence, familiarity—of the sort which friends may use and get no harm of. He had always amused her, and now he soothed and strengthened her at once by sousing her hot fancies in the cold water of his common-sense. She had learned to fear the workings of her own mind, informed as it was by a passionate heart; she would lean upon this honest fellow, who never looked for noonday at eleven o’clock, and considered that a purge or a cupping was the infallible remedy for all ailments, including broken hearts. It is not for you or me, perhaps, to complain where she did not. Queen Mary was no precisian, to expect more than she asked. If she loved she must be loved back; if she commanded she must be obeyed; if she was hipped she must be amused. I believe Signior Davy gave himself airs and made himself comfortable. She found the first ridiculous and the second racial. She knew that chivalry was not a virtue of that land where bargaining is at its best, and that where her Italian saw a gate open he would reasonably go in. The odds are that he presumed insufferably; certain it is that, though she never saw it, others saw nothing else, and, gross-minded themselves, misread it grossly. The tale was all about the town that Signior Davy was the Queen’s favourite, and where he was always to be found, and what one might look for, and who was to be pitied, etc. etc. The revellers at Inchkeith advised each other to mark the end, and some were for telling the King. But Archie Douglas was against that. ‘Tell him now,’ he said, ‘and see your salmon slip through the net. Wait till Davy’s in the boat, man, and club him then.’
Nevertheless, the deft Italian, by his cold douches, his playing the fool, his graceless reminiscences and unending novels, cured the Queen. Late in December she astonished the Court by holding a council in person—in a person, moreover, as sharp and salient as a snow-peak glittering through the haze of frost, and as incisive to the touch. There were proclamations to be approved: ‘The King’s and Queen’s Majesties considering,’ etc., the common form. These must be altered, she said. ‘The Queen’s Majesty by the advice of her dearest husband’: she would have it thus for the future. Tonic wit of the Italian! for to whom else, pray, could you ascribe it? The word went flying about that the style was changed, and was not long in coming to Inchkeith. ‘The Queen’s husband!’ Ill news for Inchkeith here.
Yet, the night he had it, he gloomed over it—being in his cups—with a kind of slumberous gaiety stirring under his rage.
‘The Queen’s husband! By the Lord, and I am the Queen’s husband. Who denies it is a liar. Archie Douglas, Archie Douglas, if you say I am not the Queen’s husband you lie, man.’
‘I, sir?’ says Archie, very brisk. ‘No, sir, I am very sure of it. By my head, sir, and her Majesty knows it.’